The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge continues to heat up, with a Fourth competitor now officially entered in the race for the remaining purses. Team BonNovA, stationed in Mojave, CA, will be flying their Lauryad I & II vehicles on October 26-27, 2009 at Cantil, CA. We are definitely excited to see what they have in store for the competition.

In other Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge news, it is now October and autumn is in the air, which can only mean one thing… it’s rocket season! Masten Space Systems will fly again next Wednesday and Thursday (October 7-8), and we’ll be out there covering the events on both of those days. Masten is working on providing a webcast, but you can also follow along on Twitter (@ngllc09, @dmasten, @Pomerantz, @alias_amanda, @wikkit, @NASAPrize, and hashtag #ngllc) or on Facebook. Also note that we’ll have 6 solid days of rockets between Oct. 26 – 31!

Since there are now four competitors, we’ve created a leaderboard so that you can keep track of each team’s attempts and performance. We’ll update after each attempt. Here is the current standing.